Sean McMinn

Based in Washington, DC, McMinn writes and reports news stories for NPR.org, designs infographics, and develops software that helps journalists do their jobs.

McMinn came to NPR from CQRoll Call, where he covered Congress and politics for three years as a data reporter. While there, he built interactives to help Americans better understand their government, and his reporting on flaws in FEMA's recovery programs led to the agency making changes to better serve communities struck by disaster. He also took part in an exchange with young professionals in North Africa and spent time in Egypt teaching data visualization and storytelling.

Before that, McMinn taught multimedia journalism to interns through a fellowship with the Scripps Howard Foundation.

He is also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

McMinn is an alumnus of the National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Fellowship and has served as vice-chair at the National Press Club's Young Members Committee. He has also directed the Press Club's Press Vs. Politicians Spelling Bee fundraiser, which pits members of Congress against journalists to raise funds for the club's non-profit journalism institute.

McMinn is from Thousand Oaks, CA. He holds a journalism degree with a statistics minor from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, where he was a reporter and editor on the student newspaper, Mustang News.

As COVID-19 continues to spread across the country, state and local health officials rush to try to detect and contain outbreaks before they get out of control. A key to that is testing, and despite a slow start, testing has increased around the country.

But it's still not always easy to get a test. While many things can affect access to testing, location is an important starting point.

Here's how much money the campaigns of President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have raised so far, according to their Federal Election Commission filings. (Keep in mind that Trump's reelection campaign had a fundraising head start.)

More than 82,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday. How many more lives will be lost? Scientists have built dozens of computational models to answer that question. But the profusion of forecasts poses a challenge: The models use such a wide range of methodologies, formats and time frames that it's hard to get even a ballpark sense of what the future has in store.

At a time when jigsaw puzzles may be harder to come by than toilet paper, the hot new item in the Trump campaign online store is a 200-piece puzzle, featuring a faintly smiling President Trump standing in front of an American flag, giving two thumbs up.

The $35 puzzle is just the latest example of the campaign capitalizing on in-the-moment merchandise.

State leaders are considering reopening economies and allowing people to leave their homes, but more and more Americans appear to be doing so on their own.

Emerging data suggest that though people dramatically altered their habits to stay at home during the first month of America's response to the pandemic, that cooperation has since leveled off and — eventually — decreased. This could point to long-term challenges for state governments asking citizens to cooperate with extended stay-at-home policies.

NPR and the Associated Press are keeping track of who has the most delegates throughout the primary season. At the Democratic National Convention in July, those delegates will choose a nominee for the party.

Three years ago, only about one in ten high school students reported having recently used e-cigarettes. But a study published this week in JAMA shows the proportion of students vaping nicotine has now grown to more than one in four.

Twitter and Facebook last month suspended hundreds of thousands of accounts and operations that they said were part of a Chinese state-linked disinformation campaign designed to discredit pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Annie Haigler steps out of her home in Louisville, Ky., pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket to dab sweat off her forehead. She enjoys sitting on her porch, especially to watch the sunrise. She has always been a morning person.

But as the day progresses, the heat can be unbearable for her. On summer days like this, when highs reach into the 90s, the lack of trees in her neighborhood is hard for Haigler to ignore.

"That's what I'm accustomed to trees doing: They bring comfort. You don't notice it, you don't think about it. But they bring comfort to you," she says.

When Shakira Franklin drives from West Baltimore to her job near the city's Inner Harbor, she can feel the summer heat ease up like a fist loosening its grip.

"I can actually feel me riding out of the heat. When I get to a certain place when I'm on my way, I'll turn off my air and I'll roll my windows down," says Franklin. "It just seems like the sun is beaming down on this neighborhood."

Facing a House of Representatives controlled by Democrats who are issuing document demands and subpoenas, President Trump's White House counsel's office grew its payroll by nearly a third, newly released records reveal.

Congressional negotiators are hurtling toward another deadline — Feb. 15 — to avoid a partial government shutdown. A bipartisan group of 17 lawmakers on the House and Senate appropriations committees are working to reach a deal to fund seven of the 12 outstanding annual bills to fund the federal government.

The controversy centers on just one of the funding measures for the Department of Homeland Security. President Trump waged the longest shutdown in U.S. history because the bill did not include enough money to help build his long-promised "wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The presence of Juul e-cigarettes in high schools across the country is increasing — and so is Juul Labs' lobbying presence in the nation's capital.

The company, which bills its product as "a satisfying alternative to cigarettes," spent $750,000 on lobbying during the last three months of 2018, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with Congress on Tuesday.

The issue of gerrymandering — the ability of politicians to draw legislative districtsto benefit their own party — burst into view as a major political issue in 2018.

Even as voters and courts vigorously rejected the practice this year, politicians in some states are doing their best to remain in control of the redistricting process. Critics argue that amounts to letting politicians pick their own voters.

For years, the world has imposed strict sanctions on North Korea in an attempt to stop its development of nuclear weapons. Officials from nations across the globe have seized shipments of raw materials, shut down shell companies and interdicted ships smuggling equipment.

But despite these efforts, last year North Korea tested the most powerful weapons known to humanity: a nuclear device far larger than any it had tested before, and an intercontinental ballistic missile that put much of the world, including the U.S., within range.

After decades of Americans gobbling up more and more turkey, production of the bird hasn't quite been flying the same in recent years.

The U.S. produced about 6 billion pounds of ready-to-cook turkey in each of the last two years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those were among the highest production levelson record for the industry.

As the U.S. Postal Service's law enforcement arm investigates hand-made potential explosives sent to prominent Democrats and other critics of the president across the country, they have begun a process that's become a rarer one for the agency.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service opened 19 cases related to suspicious items or substances in Fiscal Year 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.

That number is a steep drop from four years prior, when postal inspectors initiated more than 200 cases.